Rodney Mullen
"The most influential skateboarder in history"
John Rodney Mullen was born in Gainesville, Florida in August of 1966. Rodney is considered by most people to be the most influential skateboarder in history. Rodney Mullen is credited with inventing tons of tricks, including the flat-ground ollie, kickflip, and a whole lot more.
Rodney began skating in January of 1974 when he was given his first skateboard when he was 7 years old. After skating for only nine months, he got sponsored by Inland Surf Shop, and he won the first contest he ever entered, which was at Kona skatepark in Jacksonville, Florida. Rodney easily won the Boy's Freestyle event and was immediately noticed by Bruce Walker ("The Godfather of Florida Skateboarding") and Rodney was soon skating under the sponsorship of Walker Skateboards.
During the next three years, Rodney entered and won nearly 30 skate contests, most of which were in Florida, including a win at the Oceanside Nationals in June, 1979. Coached by Barry Zaritsky, Rodney Mullen was given a radical training program, which helped him defeat of freestyle world champion Steve Rocco at the Oasis Pro in 1980.
Rodney turned pro with the legendary Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade. In 1988, he left the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he had been studying Biomedical Engineering for four years. In early 1989, Mullen left Powell-Peralta and became Steve Rocco's business partner in World Industries, and also kept his status as a pro skater for the company. By the time the freestyle competition era ended in 1990, Rodney Mullen had won 34 out of 35 different freestyle contests he’d entered during the past 10 years, beaten only once by Per Welinder. Rodney's freestyle contest record is considered the most successful run in skateboard competition history.
Rodney Mullen's time at World Industries was the beginning of his career shift from freestyle skating to street skating. He left the World Industries skate team to join Plan B, which was a "super team" consisting of some of the highest profile skaters of the time. Throughout this period, Rodney was pushed by Plan B founder Mike Ternasky to adapt his freestyle skating to street. This change was first witnessed in the 1992 Plan B video titled Questionable, and brought in a new era of street skateboarding that took freestyle tricks which were traditionally done without rolling, or done at very slow speeds on a flat surface, to a more varied terrain at higher speeds and incorporating obstacles.
Mike Ternasky died in a car accident, and Mullen started the A-Team in 1995. It was his attempt at forming a "super team" since Plan B defected from the World Industries empire. Rodney's A-Team folded in 2000, and he joined a new team as a pro rider for Enjoi Skateboards, a company founded by former A-Team rider Marc Johnson.
Mullen later left Enjoi and started running Almost Skateboards along with Daewon Song. Rodney Mullen still maintains his status as a pro skater with the company.
Mullen has overseen the development of new skateboard technology for various companies over the years, including Dwindle brands
Rodney Mullen expanded his skate product development and created Tensor trucks for the company Dwindle Distribution. He has also developed experimental and composite decks for Dwindle brands. In 2002, the World Industries companies, under the holding name Kubic Marketing, were bought by Globe International for $46 million. Kubic Marketing's management remained the same and Mullen began working for Globe International's Dwindle Distribution brand.
In 2004, Dwindle announced that it has been making skateboard decks in China under Rodney Mullens supervision. A Dwindle spokesperson explained that the decision was “to better control our current product quality and develop new advanced products. All this, while simultaneously lowering the price on existing skate-deck products.”
Rodney Mullen also wrote an autobiography entitled The Mutt: How to Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself
Rodney continues to skate street, and some of the tricks he invented, like the kickflip, heelflip, 360 flip, and flat ground ollie, are now considered basic tricks, but Rodney Mullen will always be considered revolutionary. He continues to invent his own tricks like the underflip variations and darkslide variations.
Here is a list of Rodney Mullen tricks that he's invented.